Decorating / planning

angstocker22

I was just wondering what you all are doing to plan your decor at the reception.

Do you have "helpers" that you are going to prepare something for? Are you going to design a table on your own time, take a picture & give it to the helpers? Are you using a website to design it? What about the floral decorations on the tables, are you doing any? If so, are you buying them prior and including them in your "pre-design". Are you doing something like this for ALL your tables (head table, guest tables, cake table, sign in table, buffet table)? 
My FcousinIL is helping me with getting "helpers" together and I want to know what the best way to go about getting the right info to them so everything is done right. 
Are you assigning 1-2 tasks to your helpers? For example, our buffet table, FcousinIL said that we should assign 2 people to decorate it, then 2 people to do the guest & head tables, then someone to do the cake & sign in table, etc... 
Who are your helpers? 
How much time are you giving the helpers?
Our venue emailed me last week and said they added a option. We pay an additional $300 and they set up all the tables & chairs (for the ceremony & recep) and clean up and all away all the trash & dispose of it for us. Is this worth it? Would you do this? (The venue was $2500 with tax total)

Also, our ceremony has a beautiful white huge pergola that sits atop of a few stairs on a concrete patio type thing... it has a laurel hedge behind it but no flowers. I DO NOT want to spend tons of money on flowers for the ceremony so all we have planned so far is just doing aisle/chair floral decor. Nothing on arches or pedestals. Do you think it's worth $100-200 to add more floral decor to the pergola? The ceremony flowers that we are using are going to be used in a way that we can remove them from the chairs and re-use them on the guest tables as decor. We are going to tie a bunch around the aisle chair and reuse them like this:
http://www.seattleflowers.com/gallery/gerbera-daisy-centerpiece/gerbera-daisy-centerpiece-ws-14-41.jpg
Do you think that is enough floral decor for the ceremony or should we add more?? FI said we could add 2 huge baskets of flowers on arches at the pergola & move them to the buffet table or cake table... I dunno...???

Any insight would be appreciated!! 


 

melissa82

My venue set up the tables, chairs, linens, place settings, chargers, table numbers that I made and put my menus at each place setting.

I made my centerpieces a few days before and dropped them off at the venue. My DOC set up all the centerpieces, decorated our table, etc. day of. We didn't have floral centerpieces but our florist put petals on the tables, etc.

angstocker22

I wish our venue would do all that!

KST_

Holy COW that's a lot of questions! And unfortunately, some I've been putting off thinking about myself.

Reception: I have a friend/coworker who is going to be in charge of set-up at the reception since I can't afford a DOC and the only other bride on here who used my location had a terrible review of the site manager getting in the way of her DOC and upsetting things. So my friend is good at being firm when it's needed and is going to spearhead it. My site doesn't do ANY set up for tables and chairs. I'm going to have to find some more friends/relatives who are willing to help with that. I would say, if you do have the money in your budget, pay to have the venue set up tables and chairs and do the cleaning. It's a pain and while friends/family probably won't mind helping decorate, they probably want to be able to go home at the end, not have to take setup and take down and stack tables/chairs and sweep, etc. I'm looking into digging under the couch to find someone to hire with the cleanup.

Do you have "helpers" that you are going to prepare something for? Are you going to design a table on your own time, take a picture & give it to the helpers? Yes. Since my friend is acting as reception DOC, she will coordinate. I will have a diagram of the floor plan for her (either hand drawn or on PC depending on my mood). My CP are very eclectic so that will mostly get left to the discretion of the setup people as to what looks nice. I have a few inspiration pictures of the look I found on a blog. I'll do one example at home and take pictures. My mom and I will be going to Pike 2 days before and getting all the flowers and cleaning them and perhaps loosely arranging them into little clumps, but since my look is lots of vintage glass bottles with varying bunches of flowers, it doesn't matter too much.

If your FCuzIL is helping, I would let her manage it how she thinks best and have her take the lead. So if she thinks it's easiest to assign people specific tables, then ok.

As far as time, we can get into our reception venue at 8am and my ceremony is at 11:30. Since my helpers all should be at the ceremony (!), they will need to be done with setup by 10:45 to leave time to get there and park.

For your ceremony - do you have a picture of the pergola with the hedge? Honestly, I don't think things all have to draped in flowers unless that's your top love/priority. The green hedge will make you really pop nicely as a background for your guests and the photographer. I say don't worry about it at all. OR if you feel self-conscious about it, what about getting two nice urn pots and then putting a plant in it that is living and then can be used at home.

karebear219

I had a DOC, so I didn't have any helpers, but what I did for them was wrote down an inventory of all my supplies and what they were for. I also wrote down where to put them. For more complex things I actually drew a picture of what it was supposed to look like. I think it is worth it to buy the flowers to decorate it.

jennuinne

I plan to have fam/friends help.  I think I will come up w/ a to do list and ask who wants to do what.  I think I'd do it be overall tasks, like set up tables/chairs, do all linens, do centerpieces, etc. than by each table.  I'll make sure someone knows the overall vision and probably have pics and a floorplan to help.

We have venue from 3-11, reception starts at 6.  So, I'll have people there starting at 3.

Not sure on the pergola, it depends on what it looks like.  Also, my mom has five nice planters she does every year, sorta like KST was saying.   I'm thinking of having her plant coordinating colors this spring and bringing those to help decorate the ceremony and then maybe take them into the reception also.

angstocker22

Here's the link to the Pergola pic. Just click the top center icon on the left to see it.

http://www.ortingmanor.com/wedding_gallery.htm

mma3

My caterer is responsible for setting up the tables - my CP are pertty simple so it is just a matter of placing them on the tables, spreading a few leaves and lighting the candles.  I rented my venue for the day to ease the stress of everything.  Since they set it up they are also taking it down.  Had forgotten about the whole cleaning thing.  Hmmmmm may have to think on that one for a while.